Page 56 of Cruel Alpha Beast
We clear a space on the kitchen table, and soon, our cries of passion bounce off the four walls of this room. The warmth of my desire rises up and down my veins, spreading throughout me until they burst from my body, and I claim this woman as my own yet again.
As she lies with her back on the table, legs still quivering as she comes down from her climax, I pull out from her and close my eyes. I keep waiting for the raw magic from the legend to manifest within me, to become something so powerful that it can take down Violet and this Willow lady residing within her.
But nothing. I don’t feel different at all.
I turn to Lacey, who looks mystified as she puts her clothes back on. “You don’t feel it either?” I ask.
“That was nothing but passion,” she whispers. “Pure desire.”
I start wondering if maybe this power is dormant. If it’s waiting to be used at the proper moment. Or if maybe we have to prove ourselves to the magic, just as much as we have to prove it to each other.
I’m about to share my thoughts as Lacey quickly pulls her underwear back up around her waist and smooths the skirt of her sundress, but then I hear the telltale sounds of a ruckus outside. I must have been deafened to it, focusing all of my energy on Lacey and the feelings within me.
I pull my jeans back up over my boxers, leaving my T-shirt in a heap on the floor of the kitchen. I’m far too sweaty to even think about putting it back on, and besides, this fight outside could end poorly, especially with Violet growing in power every day.
Just before I can step over to the door, I hear a loud banging on the other side of it, but much lower down than I would have expected to hear it coming from. I pull the door open carefully, the screams in the street only getting louder.
Across the way from our house, it’s more than just a petty argument over litter or who’s walking on what side of the road. It’s a full-on scuffle with multiple people in my charge. I’m about to go run and end this before it’s someone’s life that is ended, when I look down and see who exactly has been banging on the door.
It’s an older man, a friend of my dad’s, named Paul. He’s in a daze, lying on his side, covered in a flop sweat on my porch. His head lolls back and forth, and I can see the black spotscreeping up on the side of his neck. His arms are also afflicted, and I’m sure that if he weren’t wearing full-legged pants, it would be up and down his shins as well.
“Fuck,” I mutter to myself. “Lacey, call the infirmary! Right now!”
I sense her rushing for her phone behind my shoulder, but I don’t stick around to hear her call. The skirmish across the street is only getting worse, and I can see sprays of blood from broken noses and shattered teeth in the air.
Shifting into a wolf, I bound over Paull’s plague-ridden body and burst straight through the fight. I don’t care who started it. I don’t care what they’re fighting over. I just started using my teeth to pull people’s legs away, kicking them over, and even getting on my hind legs to snarl in their faces. Whatever I can do to separate this madness.
Eventually, they’re all on the ground, and then the reflection starts happening. I hear them question themselves and each other, none seeming to know what started this horrible rumble in the first place. One of the men searches for the missing canine tooth I’ve almost stepped on, and he cleans it off with his shirt before tucking it away in his pocket.
“Everyone,” I say through many deep breaths. “Town meeting!”
Chapter 23 - Lacey
It’s been some time since I’ve been to regular town meetings in the valley, but I remember that most of these meetings are usually filled with a small level of tension here. Even if all they’re about is contesting whose lawns are getting too high, or maybe even a bored older woman will bring up drama that doesn’t need to be addressed before the greater public, there’s always a sense of trouble looming over our heads.
Well, this particular meeting has tension in spades. And that’s saying something because there is a significant portion of our town residents missing from this meeting tonight. I heard whispers upon my own entry of other residents falling to the plague earlier today. The infirmary’s halls are filling up rather quickly, and some believe they’ll have to call in help from shifter medics across the country.
My legs are still quivering, but I’m unsure if that’s from the passionate mating session that Sawyer and I just engaged in, or if it’s coming from the abject horrors that had been occurring outside of our door while we were in our own little worlds. How frightening it was to know that that was happening mere feet away.
I can’t stop thinking about the conversation Sawyer and I had earlier, as well. I cried. A lot. I realized the depths of my lingering trauma were not as shallow as I’d thought they were. And I told Sawyer how I really felt inside, even though I was just learning it myself right then and there.
He was heartbroken, that much was obvious, but instead of merely apologizing and expecting that to be the band-aid over my emotional bullet hole, he told me that he would provehimself to me for the rest of his life. I could see in his eyes, hear in his words, just how much he really loves me.
We accomplished my original goal when I dragged him back home after our meeting on the outskirts of town, or so I hoped. Neither one of us felt like there was power burgeoning within us, strong enough to free Violet from Willow’s influence, trap her back within her burning tree, and extinguish her for however long we could.
Meanwhile, a man from our town fell from the plague just outside our door. And a full-on brawl was waging across the street, much bloodier than the fight I saw for myself days ago.
I close my eyes as Sawyer gives his speech to the crowd, hoping against all hope that he and I will be able to end this before somebody dies, whether from the plague itself or the growing violence I have foreseen in my visions.
“…Ellis, Jasper, and I are working together with a small team to remove this curse befalling Roseville,” Sawyer announces from the dais at the front of the meeting hall. “With some outside help, we have made headway, but we are still—”
“Outside help?” someone yells out from the middle of the relatively sparse crowd. “From who?”
I can see that Sawyer is setting his jaw even from where I stand at the back of the hall. He sucks in a large breath, filling his chest as wide as he can before exhaling deeply. I think he’s going to tell them the truth, but I worry it won’t be received very well.
“We have created a tentative alliance with the witches of the woods,” Sawyer tells them.
And just as expected, all hell broke loose. People start yelling at my husband, saying both terrible things about him as a leader, as well as the witches who took me in. My eyes fill withtears yet again today as a woman standing near me spits on the ground and accuses the coven of sacrificing young children.
